Ange-Felix Patasse

Ange-Felix Patasse (25 January 1937-5 April 2011) was President of the Central African Republic from 22 October 1993 to 15 March 2003, succeeding Andre Kolingba and preceding Francois Bozize. Patasse, the first democratically-elected leader of the republic, was overthrown in a military coup in 2003.

Biography
Ange-Felix Patasse was was born in Paoua, French Equatorial Africa on 25 January 1937 to a Sara family, the son of a Free French veteran of World War II. He finished his zootechnology studies in France in 1959 and became a member of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Central African Republic after independence, briefly serving as Prime Minister of the Central African Empire in 1976. In 1979, he fled the empire after David Dacko ordered his arrest, and he went into exile in Chad before returning in 1981 as a presidential candidate. In 1993, he defeated the dictator Andre Kolingba in the presidential elections, representing the socialist Movement for the Liberation of the Central African People (MLPC) party. He was the first democratically-elected leader of the republic, and he was known to be a populist, arguing for the rights of northern CAR residents; all of the previous presidents had been from the south of the country. In 2001, general Francois Bozize rebelled against Patasse with the help of rebels from the Republic of Congo and soldiers from the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and Patasse was ousted from office in 2003 while he was attending a conference in Niger; Bozize's soldiers blocked him from returning to the country and placed Bozize in power. Patasse's supporters rebelled against Bozize in the Central African Republic Bush War of 2004-2007, and Patasse died in exile in Douala, Cameroon in 2011 at the age of 74.